Do you have a long list of films you want to watch but know you’ll never get round to seeing? Are you a film buff, but your friends never let you choose the films for fear that you might pick a Polish snoozefest in the original language? Do you enjoy watching a film with friends and swapping ideas, opinions and thoughts – and why not, having a bit of a row? Then this is just the thing for you.
In the spirit of ‘good things come in threes’: from Thursday 6 February, CINE? Il Cinema al Castello returns – the film festival conceived by Magma Aps and organised for this third season in collaboration with the Castello Volante in Corigliano d’Otranto. There’ll be plenty of new features this year, from the venue inside the picturesque castle to a programme exploring a century of cinema history. But don’t be put off – you don’t need a degree in Film Studies (we’ll take care of that), nor do you need to be an expert critic or a reader of French magazines; all you need is a curiosity about this world, which is nothing less than an expression of our soul, our existence, our very humanity: it is Art.
We promise there’ll be plenty of surprises, starting right from the opening night with a screening of *Nosferatu the Vampire* (the original 1922 version by F. W. Murnau), with live musical accompaniment on the turntable by Max Nocco, which will bring to life the gothic and sombre atmospheres of German Expressionism – the first artistic movement explored on this journey through the history of cinema (6 February at 8.45 pm) – before tracing a direct path towards modern productions (with reference to Eggers’ most recent and much-talked-about *Nosferatu*, which has just been released in cinemas). The sombre German tones will be followed by the cheerful notes of the second screening on Thursday 13 February with *The Wizard of Oz* (1939), crossing the ocean to catch a glimpse of the buzz of American studios during Hollywood’s Golden Age, first with the comedy *Susanna!* (1938, directed by H. Hawks, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant) on 20 February, then with the great and ‘smoky’ classic *Casablanca* (1942), scheduled for 27 February.
Twenty years in a month isn’t a bad pace, but it doesn’t end there: on Thursdays in March, we’ll return to the American film noirs of Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, moving on to Kurosawa’s Eastern cinema before the Italian Neorealist revolution – the first real watershed moment in this journey. Then come Italian classics and comedies, European arthouse cinema and Asian avant-garde films, right up to contemporary cinema. The programme is all waiting to be discovered and – why not? – tweaked together (if there’s that film you just can’t bring yourselves to watch on your own, here we are, ready to put it on the programme… but only if you can convince the organisers), to analyse the historical, spatial and temporal evolution of the Seventh Art over the course of a century, from the 1920s to the 2020s, with the shared aim of developing a personal artistic awareness and your own idea of cinema.
WHEN: every Thursday at 8.45 pm, starting on 6 February
COST: €2 membership fee
WHERE: Castello Volante, Corigliano d’Otranto
UPCOMING EVENTS:
6 February – Nosferatu the Vampire (F.W. Murnau, 1922) with live musical accompaniment by Max Nocco
13 February – The Wizard of Oz (V. Fleming, 1939)
20 February – Susanna! (H. Hawks, 1938)
27 February – Casablanca (M. Curtiz, 1942)
INFO: +39 379 209 4185
